...but as you say, there is no easy (or even "pretty hard") solution. There are some very wealthy, politically powerful interests for whom any massive change to how healthcare is paid for in the US would be financially ruinous. Combine that with the not-unreasonable fear that any government created by the as-broken-as-US-healthcare political system would do a terrible job with reforms, and you have a ticket to inertia. But healthcare costs have been an albatross around the neck of the US economy for decades now, and it gets worse every year.

As Elon Musk has stated (disingenuously? Who knows...), AI should be a path to humans being able to pass most labor that they don't deliberately choose to perform on to our technological servants and dispense entirely with currency in a world free of artificial scarcities, a la Banks' "The Culture" books. Instead of remaining under the control of a handful of oligarchs and causing unemployment and horrific long-term ramifications for everyone else. I think we both know which is the likely outcome, at least in the short- to medium-terms.

Stay healthy yourself, amigo! You're no spring chicken any more (me either...where did all the years go?!?), and you're still super-active. Can't manage that sort of thing when you're not fit. I still cycle (almost) like I'm still training for racing. On a stationary trainer more often than I'd prefer: some of the places I live aren't suited for road work, Multi-home first world problems, but I get the work in. Usually... lol I'm pretty fussy about food...but I travel a lot and sometimes you gotta eat what's actually available, not what's on your ideal diet!